Author of the Auran Chronicles

Useful Tools for Plotting your Novel

I’m sure everyone has their own methods of keeping notes, maintaining outlines etc when constructing their novel. Here I share mine.

(Note these aren’t word processors, just tools to aid in structuring your novel)

One piece of freeware I use is Storybook. It’s an all round story planning tool for Windows that let’s you construct strands, scenes, chapters, characters, locations etc all in a nice user interface. It’s free, but ensure you do the “custom” install when you do it so you don’t get any annoying installs along with it.

The second one is on I used on my iPhone for mobile work. I will add that for mobile work nowadays I’m more working on Google docs so I can sync across devices, then add back to Storybook later on, but for a time this was my “go to” app.

Anyway this second app has similar options as Storybook, with plotting, scene, character templates etc. It’s not as feature rich as Storybook but I have found us useful for initial story modelling exercises.

So, what do you folks use, if anything? I’ve found that just plain notes doesn’t work for my disorganised brain, and I need some assistance in putting a structure together.